Skidboot learned intricate tricks from David Hartwig. In one of them, he would tell Skidboot to grab the ball on the count of three. The owner would count "one ... two ..." and then recite a series of unrelated numbers before casually adding "three" -- when the dog would sink its teeth into the stuffed ball.

"I'm just very empty," Barbara Hartwig said in Wednesday editions of The Dallas Morning News. "He was something special. He just had a special spirit."

The Hartwigs asked that Skidboot's fans remember him with a donation to an animal shelter.

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